


Carpe et Capere

by UnmaskedPotential



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Mystery, Seizure, Seizures, requested topic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-09-16 17:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16958232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnmaskedPotential/pseuds/UnmaskedPotential
Summary: When a set of seizures appears to have our favorite demigod held captive, how will the Avengers band together to help heal him only a short time after the battle of New York? Will Loki find support and returned health on Midgard or is this the end of the line for the trickster? Prompt by NineCrow from fanfiction.net.





	1. Chapter 1

It began almost inconspicuously: a mild jerk of his leg, a twitch on his face, a blank stare at his holding cell’s walls—Loki didn’t think much of it. It was harmless. It was needles to mention to anyone and certainly didn’t warrant getting help from the healers. It would dissipate, Loki reasoned. Maybe it was just his nerves as he awaited his punishment from the Allfather after trying unsuccessfully to rule Midgard. Maybe it was just his lack of sleep—still, quiet and dark sleep without any dreams—something Loki just wasn’t getting anymore. It could have been a number of things with a number of explanations.

 

What Loki didn’t know, though, was that it was going to turn into something and a very large something at that. What Loki was never expecting happened right at the moment he was chained in front of the Allfather and the shackles around his neck and wrists clanked together as Loki went from standing to collapsing on the ground.

 

Loki never anticipated seeing that look of worry and concern flicker in Thor’s and Frigga’s faces.

 

It was all he could imagine before he was certain that the lights went out.

 

{***}

 

“Stress is a likely cause.”

 

Loki heard the voice almost as a ringing in his ears.

 

He didn’t appreciate it.

 

“But—but the jerking?” Thor stammered nervously.

 

If Loki had control over his vocal chords he would have laughed harshly.

 

_As if you actually **care** , Thor,_ Loki thought. No one ever cared for Loki and when they did they were snatched away coldly and deliberately. Loki knew this for certain, now.

 

_Your birthright was to die_. The harsh words reverberated in his aching skull. He didn’t bother opening his eyes because he had already decided in the last second that he didn’t want to be here.

 

_Did you mourn?_ The memory left a bad taste in his mouth.

 

Thor’s surprise of all things was childlike and inconsistent, sentimental and foolish.

 

_Why would they? No one cared about Loki. They never would_.

 

Loki could have sworn he heard a whispered “Monster” in the darkness.

 

He mentally shook himself, ears tuning back into the slightly wavering remark.

 

“L-likely not related.” A novice healer, then. No master healer would stammer like that about a royal family member.

 

Loki huffed internally—not family member was more like it.

 

“Your course of action?” Odin asked with the pompous air of authority. For the shit he just pulled, Loki was resentfully amazed he had bothered to show up.

 

“Bedrest.”

 

“Then his cell in the dungeons will do.”

 

“But, father—” Thor began and was cut off at once.

 

“Thor, you would do best to mind your tongue. Loki is a war criminal in both parts Asgard and Midgard. He has played a hand in many an atrocity and must be treated as such.” Loki heard someone’s feet shuffle nervously—probably the healer. “It would be foolish to trust in him so soon after these opened wounds have yet to bleed. Your brother has always been mischievous, do not forget that. It is merely another trick to get us to waver with our doubts. Do not feed into them. He has a bed in the dungeons, he can rest there. That is all.”

 

Loki heard the swish of Odin’s robes as he made, Loki was sure of it, a grand exit from the healing rooms.

 

“He will be all right, my son,” Frigga whispered to her eldest.

 

Thor seemed unconvinced.

 

“This doesn’t feel right, mother.” Loki imagined those blue eyes looking up at mother pleadingly.

 

“I know.”

 

“…Will it ever?”

 

“No, Thor.”

 

Another flashback rattled in Loki’s skull as his chest ached at the past trauma.

 

He couldn’t help but wish to open his eyes, to gaze upon Frigga one last time but he remained stubbornly stoic. He would not give up his façade so quickly. Tricks and lies were second nature to Loki, they were his safety net and he would not give them up for the satisfaction of his not-family’s grace.

 

Let them think what they want.

 

Loki didn’t care.

 

And with that lie settling deeply onto his shoulders, he waited for slumber to overtake him and, when it did, he couldn’t help but smile.

 

{***}

 

There was a swift, hard knock on the side of Loki’s bed that met with a grumbled and irritable, “Get up.”

 

Loki thrust his arms over his face in defiance.

 

“No.”

 

The chains still around his wrists clanked together, halting his hands from reaching their intended target of which Loki then growled lowly to himself.

 

“It wasn’t a question.” The gruff voice deadpanned.

 

There was a pause in the conversation where Loki thought maybe he’d have the upper hand, before another guard came over to his bedside and grabbed forcefully at a clump of his long raven locks.

 

“Now, heathen!”

 

Loki couldn’t stop a yelp from escaping his lips before his eyes thrust open and caught the guard in question’s blue eyes reflecting glee at his dismay. Loki was risen a few inches off the bed from where their hand was capturing his hair.

 

The guard smiled, “Not so tough now, eh?”

 

“Make no mistake, guard, for I am still above you.” Loki snarled back in contempt.

 

The guard laughed, releasing Loki’s hair quickly before laughing again.

 

“And who do you think yourself to be?”

 

Loki opened his mouth to answer in haste, but found that he couldn’t think of a witty reply.

 

_Who was he, now? After all was said and done, what was he other than a monster?_

 

The guard’s lips quirked into a pleased smile. “You are nothing, trickster.”

 

The taunt danced in the air to Loki, almost sparkling in white and blue as the reality of his situation finally began to sink in.

 

He huffed and shook his head, trying to pretend that he didn’t care, but a hint of hurt mirrored in his green eyes.

 

The guard, for what it was worth, unfortunately picked up on this.

 

“Oh? You think you’re still a prince of these realms? Well, you aren’t, trickster. You are nothing to this realm and you are better off without it. You’re lucky the Allfather still has a soft spot for you in his heart to not abide by executing your pathetic, pale ass. Instead he’s keeping you imprisoned in the dungeons. Make no mistake now, trickster, for there is no asylum for you here. We will fuck with you, as we so please, and there is not anything you can do about it. You are our bitch, now. And I very, very much look forward to taking advantage of that fact.” The guard clicked his tongue between his lips and shoved Loki forwards so that he stumbled and landed roughly on his knees.

 

“I like to play with my food before I eat it.” The guard mentioned with a sparkle in his eyes. He picked up the back of Loki’s shirt easily and shoved him forwards again.

 

This time, Loki caught himself and began the task of walking his way towards the dungeons, a settled resignation in his steps and a worry in his shoulders that his time spent in exile with Thanos and the Other might have been a lighter sentence than his time captured now in Asgard’s dungeons.

 

{***}

 

The guard with a personal vendetta against Loki turned out to be Alastor. Alastor the Bastard, as Loki liked to think of him. They had had an altercation over a thousand years ago and Alastor had not appreciated a prank that Loki had pulled on him—even though it was hilarious and clearly showed Alastor’s lack of humor in any given situation.

 

But now, Alastor was making his revenge on Loki’s treatment within the dungeons as spiteful and turbulent as possible. Most of it was harmless and Loki likened Alastor’s attempts at thwarting Loki’s time there as equivalent in attempts to swat and kill a fly successfully. Alastor lacked cruelty in his physical attributes but the malice in his words were what cut through Loki like a swordfish.

 

And, Loki for what it was worth, did not appreciate this.

 

One evening, Alastor had brought a plate from dinner to Loki’s cell.

 

Loki had stared at the empty plate with a few chicken bones still on it and gazed up slowly at Alastor licking his fingers and plopping a third bone onto the plate.

 

“Oh, I apologize, trickster. Were you hungry?” He laughed in that loud, boisterous sound that grated Loki’s nerves.

 

“I must have forgotten you were my charge. I’d make it up to you, but, I just don’t care. You’re not worth that time, trickster.” He leveled Loki with a practiced glare and dropped the plate to the stone floor so loudly that it made a few other prisoners in nearby cells jump.

 

Loki’s jaw muscles tightened in an effort to not fuel the fire. He wisely bit back his remarks, even though they threatened to explode from his cheeks. He made it as far as Alastor reaching the farthest corner of his cell before he shouted back at him:

 

“I must say, Alastor, pink just wasn’t your color.”

 

Alastor’s back tightened and he swiveled his face to the side over his shoulder, his muscles taunt.

 

“For that comment, you don’t eat for the next two weeks.”

 

“Oh, what a pleasure it’s been doing service with you, Alastor.” Loki muttered, rolling his eyes and turning back to his book.

 

Before he realized it, in what could only have been a millisecond, his book crashed to the floor of his cell when Alastor roared in hate and slammed his fists onto the golden impenetrable wall. Disoriented, Loki sat up from his spot no longer on his bed but the white marble, uncertain as to how he had gotten there.

 

Instead of hatred in Alastor’s face there was a surprised pleasure.

 

“Looks like the trickster’s no longer in good health. I wonder how the Allfather will repent his sins?”

 

Loki blinked, a silence following him as he tried to think of what just happened. His mind carrying a blank, he stared back at Alastor with shock on his features.

 

“I-I’m fine.” He lied, almost easily.

 

“Don’t worry, Loki, your secret is safe with me.” Alastor smiled before trotting away and Loki had a feeling in his chest that that meant no guard would be on his side for alerting anyone, if he even did, about his health.

 

This eternity was looking a hell of a lot longer than Loki once assumed.


	2. Chapter 2

The sheer capacity of boredom began to set in for the trickster by the second week in the dungeons. Not only had Loki read his books through once but eight times. And it wasn’t like he had many people to talk to. Other prisoners were laughably beneath him and too far away to hear his whispered plights.

 

Alastor made sure of that.

 

Alastor had begrudgingly isolated Loki into a corner of nothingness and Loki despised him for it. By day two Loki began to talk to the microscopic organisms around him as he wiped dust from the floor onto his fingertips.

 

“It is ungodly dirty in here,” Loki mused to himself, wishing internally that someone or something would agree with him so that it didn’t feel like his skull was splitting in two.

 

“You’re right,” Loki murmured in a deeper voice, pretending to be an accompanying entity. “You should really clean this place up.”

 

“Why thank you for that observation,” Loki bowed to his imaginary companion, setting aside his book and beginning to tidy up. Because he was O for zero for cleaning supplies, he largely took the dust scraped against his hands and used, sadly, his sleeves to reposition the gray fuzziness.

 

Satisfied to the best of his ability, Loki sighed and looked to the hall for a glimpse of what might have been the time although he had a sneaking suspicion that it had only been ten minutes, if that. He couldn’t tell if it was fortunate or unfortunate for him that the Asgardians didn’t keep track of time in the dungeons. Maybe it was a way of cracking down on prisoners--forcing them to think of their crimes and repent.

 

Loki chuckled at the prospect.

 

“What now?” Loki asked to the open air.

 

The silence that followed was deafening.

 

The unwelcome gurgle from his stomach rattled his frame. Alastor had stuck to his word and Loki had barely eaten in the last few weeks. What little he was fed from other guards who took pity on him he was saving and rationing out to himself very carefully.

 

Oh, how he longed for someone to talk to him.

 

As if on cue, he heard the sweetest voice from behind him.

 

“My dearest Loki,” her voice brought calmness over the trickster’s soul.

 

“M-Frigga,” Loki replied, tears almost filling his eyes.

 

“You look so pale,” her voice moaned with concern. Her head tilted to the side as she looked upon him with sadness muddled in her eyes and a distinct forgiveness within them too. “I have done everything in my power to make you comfortable.”

 

Moving across the cell Loki said, “Have you? Does Odin share your concern? Does Thor? It must be so inconvenient them asking after me day and night.” Loki’s voice took on a tone of cruel sarcasm.

 

Frigga barely bristled at his words, instead calmly pointing out that: “You know full well it was your actions that brought you here.”

 

Loki raised a hand dismissively. “My actions? I was merely giving truth to the lie I had been fed my entire life…that I was born to be a king.”

 

Frigga continued without a beat, “A king? A true king admits his faults. What of the lives you took on Earth?”

 

Loki huffed, “A mere handful compared to the number that Odin has taken himself.” Loki’s back faced Frigga as he took up a wooden cup in his hand.

 

Frigga shook her head in dismay. “They were lives no different than yours.”

 

Loki barked a laugh. “Please, do spare me the woes of a mortal’s lifespan. They are beneath me. I am not them.”

 

“You may be a god but your plights are no more significant than theirs. They were innocent lives you took, Loki, and a punishment is only fitting for the havoc you so needlessly brought onto them.”

 

“Needless,” Loki groaned in exasperation. “As needless as this conversation were to me.” He shook his head, wishing for the doubts crawling in his mind to disappear.

 

“Although your father took--” Frigga began but Loki immediately turned around in a fury, slamming his hand onto the nearby table and shouting, “He’s not my father!”

 

They stared at each other for a moment as Frigga pursed her lips, her golden hair shining in the light.

 

“Then am I not your mother?” she whispered.

 

Loki paled, taking a small step back. “You’re not,” he affirmed.

 

Frigga shook her head, a deeper sadness than before entering her eyes.

 

“You’re always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.”

 

Tears emerged in Loki’s green eyes as he made to comfort Frigga and an apology formed on his tongue for everything that had happened, everything that would come and for all that he was but when he reached for her hand it passed through her illusion and the sting of hurt and betrayal laced through his veins for days.

 

{***}

 

It was another week later when the nightmares got worse. Often Loki found himself shouting to no one and thrashing in his thin sheets. He would awaken with his heart racing, sweat dripping into his garments and breathing heavily. He’d lie awake with only the gold sheen from the wall lighting up his space as the memories lingered at the edges of his vision until Alastor came by presumably hours later with the sludge for porridge.

 

Loki never mentioned them to anyone but it wasn’t like he had anyone to tell either. He was just another prisoner of Asgard’s realm, an outsider and a misfit. There wasn’t anyone to talk to, anyone to manipulate or anyone to lie to. He almost wished there was. It would certainly make his imprisonment that much more bearable.

 

Instead he had shades of darkness, old memories locked away in his brain and the loneliness that threatened to overtake him.

 

It also meant he had a lot of time to ruminate over his life, his mistakes, his faults and his betrayals--both the ones inflicted upon him and those that he had created. He would spend hours rethinking old conversations and playing out all the variables regarding new ones. He found himself praying for mother--not-mother--to return but she never did.

 

He didn’t know it then but it would be the last encounter he had had with her and the regret he had of this pooled in his veins for years to come.

 

{***}

 

The day it happened began as uneventful as the forty-two before it; Loki awoke from another hellish nightmare in which he ran, futilely, away from the six-fingered hands of the Other and their torture only to be re-captured and tortured worse than before. It was a memory, in some respects. There were small details like the way the Other’s fingers slid like gloss over Loki’s skin before they broke his arms and harshly hissed whispers that collided into Loki’s eardrums were replaced with dream nonsense such as bouquets of roses being inserted into Loki’s rectum and delightful smiles from the galaxy around them sprinkling into his vision like a kaleidoscope.

 

Regardless, it was absurd and left him distraught and shaking all the same. He had spent the last few hours before dawn broke staring up at the dark ceiling wishing that something would force its way into the castle so that the stones above would just end his misery for him.

 

It beat having to stare at ceilings with his vision blurring as he wept to himself softly enough that no one would suspect a thing.

 

Breakfast came then disappeared.

 

Alastor was still a bastard, some other prisoner whined about not getting enough porridge and things went on as they will in life.

 

It was only near lunchtime that the ruckus began.

 

At this time, Loki was tossing a cup into the air while catching it with ease as he lay on his blankets in the bed within his cell. It started with this indescribable noise, a series of grunts and groans and an… explosion of sorts. Upon hearing this, Loki sat up from his bed and approached one of the walls of his room, curiosity mixing with apprehension.

 

Within his line of vision, he saw the breakout of multiple prisoners, their footsteps clambering one after the other as they took off with noise down the hall. Loki couldn’t help but roll his eyes at how amateur they were in their high spirits with their newfound freedoms.

 

Loki’s gaze narrowed considerably when the creature who appeared to be the one breaking out the other prisoners slowly walked by his cell.

 

The creature gazed with mistrust upon the trickster, stepping up close to the golden shield with Loki glowering a smirk right back in their direction. The creature, large and dark like a silhouette with spiky horns upon its face and armor, approached cautiously, gazing over Loki’s more lavish cell and taking in his position.

 

Its blue eyes locked with Loki’s green as it raised a swollen hand as if to break the iridescent shield, only to growl lowly and turn away at the last second.

 

Loki’s brow quirked as he raised his chin at the retreating figure’s back, offering sage advice, “You might want to take the stairs to the left.”

 

With a final look back at the trickster, the creature retreated from the dungeons into the grand halls of Asgard beyond.

 

Loki hoped the chaos ensuing behind this creature and within the dungeons would cause a furrowed brow and the lines on Odin’s forehead to wrinkle as he rung his hands with what to do next.

 

Mischief managed, Loki returned to a book that he flipped through mindfully. Not mere moments later, Loki could faintly hear Thor’s friends and Thor himself speaking to the low-life’s and fighting with them. Loki tried not to convey his anxieties, but even if he had, there wouldn’t have been a free soul around to see them.

 

Instead, he bitterly basked in the foolish nature of some creatures and read on, page after page, even if he’d already read this book days before, it kept his mind at bay and the memories hidden behind his eye sockets. With reading, he could escape even temporarily, whereas with alertness he could not maneuver an exit from these ever enclosing four walls.

 

{***}

 

It was hours later, Loki hastened a guess at about six, when a helmetless guard approached his cell. Previous guards in the hours before had managed to gather some prisoners back inside their cells--the ones who hadn’t perished in the fights that had broken out earlier at least (Loki figured this might have been more cost-effective for Odin after all).

 

When the guard, nameless and practically faceless, told Loki the news that his mother--not-mother?--was dead, he felt the world drop out from under him.

 

Because even if she wasn’t his true mother, she was the closest thing he ever had to that. She was his hope; she was his world, even though he only realized it when she was gone. When she was gone and the world was lesser without her in it and Loki would never have the chance to right his wrongs with her, he would never have the chance to be held by her one last time, he would never get to tell her how much he did love her even if he wanted nothing to do with her love because he felt he didn’t deserve it.

 

None of this would matter in the end because she was gone and Loki was left with the pieces he didn’t realize were already barely holding him together.  None of this would have caused such pain and grief to settle into his bone marrow if it weren’t for his realization with quick ease that the creature he had advised to produce pain to Odin had brought his mother instead to her death. The regret and remorse that pooled within his soul coated him to the bottoms of his feet.

 

How could this have happened? Who was he, really? Because he was certain that only a monster would cause his own mother to perish unfairly.

 

So, when after Loki’s rage self-destructed his cell and the lights went out, he barely thought anything of it. It felt only fitting for the rest of his world to be physically pulled out from under him. That’s how it felt: like someone had just thrown a blanket over his head and wrapped him up in warmth he didn’t deserve and a pain aching in his chest that he couldn’t do a thing to get rid of.

 

If this wasn’t the end for him, it sure felt like it was. And with his newly acquired grief, Loki wasn’t surprised to find himself hoping it was so he could right the wrong that had been done to his mother, if only in his sub-conscious.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> Hey guys!! Sorry it’s been a while for most of my stories! I have to juggle so many art mediums these days that some get swept under the rug for a while, eeps! 
> 
> I hope that this update is somewhat helpful and interesting! I feel that I may be rehashing the same old, same old in this chapter so I apologize if it reads that way at all! I really wanted to get some of TDW plot in this chapter which is partially the reason it took so long to get properly written (wanting to put some of the conversation and description canon to the movie). Damn you, research! 
> 
> I don’t really know how Kurse can be in this fic if the plot for this story goes sideways and avoids that movie’s entire plot but let’s pretend it works without any hiccups, shall we? XD Next chapter will take off where this one ended as after all it’s a story about seizures. :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!! I’m hoping to get more fics written up with new chapters soon. :] And if you could leave a review that would help my motivation immensely! :D xxx
> 
> This chapter was written: 12.12, 12.14, 12.17.2018 & 2.27.2019  
> Edited: 2.28.2019

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Heyyy everyone! I finally got this chapter of this NEW story done and it only took me a bunch of months without writing it to finally make it work, ahaha. I'm heading into finals week now but this is a new story that I'll be adding to every now and then.
> 
> The concept of this piece was requested by NineCrow on fanfic.net, so thanks for that, NineCrow! I hope this fic will turn out to be everything that you wished for and more! As of its conception it's a Loki centered Avengers fanfic wherein Loki deals with a sudden onset of seizures. So, like a little bit of ALU but with a different ailment. And different stuff in general, too.
> 
> The title is Latin for "Seize & Capture" and Alastor's a name I found online from names meaning demonic undertones. I'm probably still too nice for our dear Loki so if you have tips or tricks to make Alastor more of the bastard, let me know, ahaha! I hope that you all enjoy this story, let me know what you'd like to see next and hold tight for coming updates for my other stories! Thanks for reading, please leave a review if you can!
> 
> Written 4.25, 12.3, 12.11.18
> 
> Typed 12.11.18


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